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An easiness has settled into the atmosphere around them. A quiet sort of calm that they’ve never been allowed before. It’s something that lingers, softness clinging to the edge of the night in a hazy, dreamlike manner.
Unearthly. Unreal.
The sun has long since gone down behind the trees, and their skin is still fire-warmed and pink. There’s patience in every breath, a slowness to their movements now that they don’t have to rush.
This is a moment in time they have carved out for themselves; two blissful weeks stretching endlessly into the horizon, with no expectations or obligations hovering over them. They don’t have to rush. They don’t have to hide. For the first time ever, they get to just be.
It feels like this time shouldn’t belong to them. They have spent so many years holding their breath, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, that it’s hard to believe they get to have this now. It’s hard to believe that Ilya is here, in Shane’s favourite place in the world, and - for now, at least - nothing is going to take Ilya away from him.
Shane can breathe.
He can trust in this moment, trust in them, and just allow himself to enjoy it. To sink into the warmth of Ilya without being afraid that he’s going to get burned.
Ilya’s hand feels good wrapped around Shane’s. It’s strong and calloused from a lifetime holding a hockey stick, but it’s familiar too. Shane has spent over a decade learning Ilya’s hands - their skill on the ice, and with Shane’s body. It’ll take a little bit of time getting used to holding them, though.
This is a new thing.
He knows the taste of Ilya’s tongue and his come, knows the feel of him as he pins Shane to the mattress and presses inside him, and he knows the cold, cool weight of Ilya’s crucifix as it rests on Shane’s skin.
But they had never held hands until today. Until the car ride from the airport, when they’d both reached for each other at the exact same time; no longer ships passing in the night.
He likes it, he decides, while tugging Ilya along behind him as they make their way back towards the cottage.
It’s late, and cool out now, even with the fire, and Shane wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and fall asleep with Ilya beside him. That’s another new thing. They’d napped back at Ilya’s house in Boston - before Shane had gotten scared and ran from his too-big, too-real feelings - but they’ve never actually spent the night together. Never had the simple pleasure of falling asleep side by side, and waking up wrapped around each other’s bodies.
Shane wants it so much that his chest aches with longing.
He worries, for just a moment, that these two weeks might ruin him. That he will get a glimpse of what could be, if only everything were different, and it will almost wreck him when he has to let it go again. But.
He has warm fingers tangled with his own, and as he looks over his shoulder he finds Ilya watching him with a serene smile on his face, and Shane chooses to focus on that. He chooses to live in the moment for once in his goddamn life, instead of worrying about what hasn’t even happened yet.
He’s going to enjoy every single moment with Ilya, because he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get to again. Not like this, anyway.
“You are smiling,” Ilya says, his voice whisper-soft, like he’s scared to disturb the very air that surrounds them.
Shane reaches his free hand up to trace the upwards curve of his lips. He hadn’t even realised he was doing it.
“I’m happy,” Shane replies, with an easy shrug of his shoulders.
It makes Ilya smile in return, and he crowds up behind Shane as they step through the sliding doors into the cottage.
Ilya drops his hand, but only so he can rest both on Shane’s waist and nuzzle his face into the crease of Shane’s neck. He kisses him softly, lips fluttering like butterflies against the skin of his throat and the top of his shoulder. Shane leans back into him as Ilya winds his arms around his waist from behind.
“Happy looks good on you. Very pretty.”
“Fuck off,” Shane says, because it’s instinct more than anything else. But the words make his cheeks flush pink anyway, and Ilya must be able to feel the heat of them as he presses the sides of their faces together.
“Is true,” Ilya persists. “You look good here. Relaxed. Like you do not have to worry so much.”
Shane’s breath stutters as he exhales. Ilya knows him - of course he does, after all these years - but realising just how much he knows him, just how clearly he sees Shane, feels a little bit like a revelation. Ilya has always been paying attention to him, in those quiet moments between sex and goodbye, where Shane was always loose and uninhibited, and maybe too honest for something that they dared to call casual.
Ilya can recognise the burden Shane carries, and he knows what Shane looks like when he allows himself to put it down for a while.
“It feels more like home than Montreal does,” Shane admits.
Ilya’s arms squeeze tightly around him as he says, “You are just Shane here.”
And that’s…yeah. That’s exactly right. He is just Shane here. It’s the one place in the world where he doesn’t feel the weight of hockey on his shoulders. He loves hockey, obviously - more than almost anything else - but that doesn’t mean that hockey always loves him back. It’s nice to escape the pressures of that for a while.
It’s even nicer to do it with Ilya.
He squeezes Shane once more, presses another kiss to the curve of his jaw, and then pulls away from his back. He circles Shane until he’s standing in front of him, then holds out his hand in offering.
“Bedtime, yes?”
Shane sighs, smiles, and takes Ilya’s hand. “Yes.”
They move lazily through the house, meandering towards the bedroom without a care in the world. This isn’t the heated, intense rush they usually get when they find some time to get together - this isn’t about sex, or fitting as much as they can into a too-short amount of time.
It’s Shane and Ilya simply existing together in the quiet moments; it’s love when it has started to settle, even if they’re both too scared to name it yet.
This is the more that Shane has always been too afraid to dream of.
The bed is still half tussled from earlier, when Ilya had first arrived and they hadn’t been able to keep their hands to themselves. Even airplane clothes on fresh sheets wasn’t enough to stop Shane from sinking into the moment - into the pleasure - and letting himself enjoy Ilya after too much time apart. He’d felt a giddy, almost childlike sense of glee as Ilya had pinned him to the mattress; a teenager with a crush on a beautiful boy, who maybe, possibly, liked him back.
He’d made a half-assed attempt to tidy up afterwards but, for once, the mess didn’t matter as much as the man who had helped him make it.
He smiles at the rumpled duvet and wonky pillows, and when he catches Ilya eyeing them too, both of them grin at each other. Ilya tugs Shane close with the hand he’s still holding, and presses a tender kiss to the spot between Shane’s eyebrows.
“I’m going to brush my teeth, okay?” Ilya says.
Shane reaches for Ilya, his hand resting on his hip and squeezing for just a moment. Then he nods his head, and - in a move that would have been too revealing before today - he lets his eyes fall closed and tilts his chin upwards in search of a kiss. He feels Ilya’s breath on his skin first, and then the most delicate brush of his lips against Shane’s.
“Okay. I’m gonna change,” Shane says. “These clothes smell like fire.”
Ilya dips into the en-suite where his toiletries are already waiting for him, while Shane quickly strips his smoky clothes off and tosses them into his hamper. He’s too lazy for a shower tonight, so he just replaces his clothes with an old, well-worn pair of sweats, and a too-big t-shirt that slips off his shoulder on one side.
Once he’s dressed, Shane follows Ilya into the bathroom.
Ilya is standing in front of the sink with his toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, and he smiles at Shane in the mirror as he squeezes a drop out onto his brush. He looks good here, in Shane’s home - like there was an empty space just waiting to be filled, and now that Ilya is here the place feels less lonely. As if it had been waiting for him. Made for him.
Shane doesn’t say anything as he comes to stand beside him in front of the sink, except for a quiet thank you when Ilya hands over the toothpaste for Shane to squeeze onto his own brush.
As he raises it to his mouth, his eyes find Ilya in the mirror. They both grin, awkward around the brushes in their mouths, and then Ilya’s gaze begins to trail over Shane’s face, down his throat, to the tease of his shoulder where his t-shirt has slipped down. He watches as Ilya’s expression darkens, as his jaw clenches, and as he finds Shane’s gaze once more.
He feels…wanted, beneath Ilya’s hungry eyes. Desired.
But not just for sex - not just for bodies, and hands, and teeth, and tongues - but for more moments like this. Brushing their teeth together, elbows knocking as they smile shyly at each other in the bathroom mirror. Cooking burgers on the grill with Ilya’s arms around his waist. Walking to the lake hand in hand, or sitting by the fire, or making plans for tomorrow as if they have the chance of a future together.
The simple domesticity of it settles over him, syrupy and sweet like cotton candy dissolving on his tongue. There’s no pretence or performance here: they simply are.
Ilya finishes up first. He rinses his mouth out and then places his toothbrush back in the holder that has only ever housed one before today. And then he slips behind Shane, hands finding his waist as he leans down to kiss the point of his cheekbone, the flicker of his pulse, and then the freckled curve of Shane’s shoulder where his t-shirt has slipped off it.
“Beautiful.”
Shane rolls his eyes, mumbles, “Shut up,” around a mouthful of toothpaste.
But Ilya just smiles, holding Shane’s eyes in the mirror as he says, “Most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
It’s a little ridiculous to say when Shane is tired, and has toothpaste smeared on his chin, and his clothes are old and worn and hanging off him. But the expression on Ilya’s face tells Shane that he means it, so he lets himself lean back against his chest and doesn’t try to hide the flush of colour that spreads across his cheeks.
They make an interesting picture, standing here together like this: two men learning how to be soft with each other, when they come from a world that has only ever appreciated their harshness.
It’s another new thing.
Shane likes this one, too.
Ilya squeezes Shane’s waist, and then - with a knowing smirk on his face - he leans back down and bites Shane’s shoulder. It’s brief and shallow, not hard enough to leave a mark, but…but they can leave marks now, can’t they? No one is around to see them or question where they came from.
And suddenly, almost embarrassingly, Shane craves Ilya’s marks on his skin. Teeth marks from his pointed incisors, bruises from sucking at his skin - Shane wants it all. He wants proof that this is real, and not just a fantasy he has dreamt up. He wants to feel like he belongs to Ilya, even if it’s only for the next two weeks.
But Ilya laves his tongue over the spot where he bit down, kisses it to soothe the sting.
“Hurry up,” he whispers, pressing the words into Shane’s skin. “I will miss you.”
“I’ll be one minute,” Shane tells him.
Ilya tips his head back, groaning dramatically. “Is far too long.”
He disappears into the bedroom with a wink, and Shane feels his heart stumble behind his ribs. He spits out the toothpaste and rinses his mouth quickly, because - unfortunately - Ilya is right. Shane wants to burrow beneath his skin, wants to spend every single second touching him. One minute is too long.
Shane wants him - this, all of it - so fucking much.
He feels fizzy, fizzy, fizzy, like a soda can that’s been shaken and cracked open. There’s so much pressure building inside his chest that he can’t possibly keep it all inside. He laughs, just a quiet giggle at first, and then it becomes something louder. Something brighter. Something that bursts out of his chest and cracks through the echoing silence in the bathroom. He has to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle it.
Shane feels happy. Truly, deep down to his bones, happy.
He almost can’t believe it.
He’s felt it before, of course, winning the Calder and then both times he won the cup - and even when Ilya had called to say he was coming to the cottage - but it’s never been quite like this.
This kind of happiness feels like something that is just for himself; he doesn’t have to share it with his team, or the city, or the world. He doesn’t have to justify it, or perform it like it’s something he owes to everyone who knows his name. It’s just for Shane and Ilya, crackling in the space between them like something that is finding its own heartbeat.
Something tangible, that he could perhaps reach out and touch if he worked up the courage to.
Shane looks in the mirror.
He can see toothpaste in the corner of his smile that he wipes away with his thumb. But, more than anything else, Shane sees the light in his eyes. The life.
He looks younger like this, like the weight of the world has been taken off his shoulders. His eyes are shining, and his grin is stretched so wide that his freckles are all crinkled up on his cheeks. Instead of being Shane Hollander The Hockey Player, he gets to be just Shane - he gets to be the man who is in love with Ilya.
He thinks that might be his favourite thing to be.
Ilya is already in bed when Shane re-enters the bedroom. He’s propped up against the pillows with the covers pulled up to his waist, and his bare chest on display for Shane to ogle at.
It doesn’t go amiss that he’s on the right side of the bed, too. It makes Shane sigh in relief. He can only sleep on the left side here at the cottage - even though he sleeps on the right at his place in Montreal - and his neurotic brain probably would have taken it as some kind of negative sign if Ilya had taken the wrong side. But he hasn’t. And he’s smiling up at Shane like he knows exactly what’s running through his mind.
He pats the mattress beside him. Shane rolls his eyes.
“Are you inviting me into my own bed?” He asks as he saunters closer.
Ilya scoffs. “No. Not inviting. I’m telling you to get your perfect ass in this bed right now, or I will come over there and carry you.”
Shane laughs. He wouldn’t put it past Ilya to do exactly that.
Shane is lighter here, but Ilya is too. He seems relaxed, carefree in a way that Shane has never truly seen him before. The closest was in Tampa during the ASG, when Ilya had splashed in the pool with the kids, and shaken his wet hair over Shane like a dog, and then kissed Shane’s cheek on the ice like it was the easiest thing in the world.
But this Ilya - this Ilya is even more settled. Even more himself. Sweet, and excitable, and clingy in a way that Shane had never expected but is absolutely delighted to have discovered.
As he crawls in beside him, Ilya rolls onto his side so he can face Shane. It takes him no time at all to reach out and touch the freckles on Shane’s exposed shoulder, fingers tracing so lightly over his skin that he barely even feels them.
“I had a good day today,” Ilya says quietly.
Something hums beneath the surface of Shane’s skin, warm and fuzzy and bright. “Me too,” he replies. “I’m, uh. I’m really glad that you’re here.”
Ilya’s answering grin is made of sunlight and stardust and magic. Shane wants to taste it.
“Yes. So am I,” Ilya says. “I like seeing you like this.”
“What do you mean?”
Ilya’s hand moves up from Shane’s shoulder to his face, the back of his finger gently brushing over the apple of his cheek. “Like…yourself,” he says. “Not pretending for others. Not wearing a mask.”
Ilya’s gaze catches onto Shane’s right as his eyes start to fill with tears. Not because he’s upset, but because he’s never felt so seen.
He’s been alone here at the cottage for the past few days, and only had his parents for company for the last few weeks, so the costume that Shane usually wears to appease others has been stuffed into the back of his closet.
Today he hasn’t hid the way he taps each of his fingers against the pad of his thumb over and over again until it feels right, or the way he can’t have the overhead lights on without flinching, or the way he turns his socks inside out so he can’t feel the seam across his toes. He didn’t hide the way he separates all his food on his plate so none of it touches, and Ilya didn’t say anything about it but he definitely noticed.
Shane has let Ilya see a side of him few people have ever bore witness to, and he hasn’t pulled away. He’s embraced it.
“Yeah, I’m - different, I guess. When no one is watching me.”
Ilya smiles, his hand curling around Shane’s jaw and pulling his face closer. “I like it. You don’t ever have to pretend in front of me.”
Shane leans in close, until their foreheads touch and their noses brush together. For a moment he just breathes, the scent of toothpaste and firewood lingering between them. He reaches out a hand, carefully trailing it along Ilya’s jaw, down his neck, until Shane is holding Ilya’s skin-warmed crucifix in his fingers. He uses it to pull him impossibly closer.
And then they’re kissing.
It’s not heated, or with intention. He wants Ilya desperately, always, but for now it isn’t about that. Shane just wants him close - wants to taste the whispers of a future on Ilya’s tongue, and feel the hint of something more in the whorls of his fingerprints as they press into Shane’s skin.
The kiss is slow and leisurely - almost lazy, even, as their tongues tangle, and their hands pull each other closer, and their breath mixes together.
“I still can’t believe you’re really here,” Shane huffs, breathless.
Ilya’s hand on the back of Shane’s head guides him in for another kiss. Then Ilya says, “It feels like a dream, yes?”
And the truth is, it’s even more than that.
Shane had never allowed himself to dream of this - never given himself permission to linger on any thoughts of having more with Ilya than clandestine hookups in stolen pockets of time. He’d wanted it, of course, desperately and achingly. But he’d never let himself imagine it - never pictured what it could look like, because the idea of it might have broken him. Especially if he never actually got to live it.
“It feels better,” Shane confesses, and Ilya smiles.
“Yes,” Ilya agrees. “Better.”
Shane shuffles in closer, slips one of his legs between Ilya’s and pushes the tip of his nose against Ilya’s flickering pulse as he burrows into his neck. Ilya’s hand finds its way to Shane’s hip, then slips beneath his t-shirt as he winds it around his waist and pulls him in until their hearts are beating against each other.
Ilya has been inside of Shane more times than he can count, but they’ve never felt as close as this.
“Fuck me,” Shane murmurs sleepily, his lips dragging over Ilya’s throat.
Ilya laughs, pressing a kiss to the shell of Shane’s ear because it’s the only spot that he can reach. “You are tired, Shane.”
“Don’t care.”
“I am tired.”
“Still don’t care.”
“Sweetheart,” Ilya whispers, so soft and lovely that Shane pulls back because has to see his face. “We have time, yes? Two whole weeks of this. We don’t have to rush.”
Shane knows that, logically, but. There’s still a part of him that’s scared all of this will get snatched away from him. There’s still a part of him trapped in an anonymous hotel room, rushing because they only have two hours before one of them has to leave.
Shane is tired, and he wants to sleep, but he wants Ilya close, too. He wants him to never go away.
“If you don’t want to fuck me-“
Ilya snorts. “Now you know that could never be true, Hollander.”
The words settle something in Shane, and as Ilya rolls onto his back Shane presses in close as he can get. He tangles their fingers together and rests them on Ilya’s chest; he doesn’t ever want to let go.
“You’ll still be here in the morning?” He asks, vulnerable because he knows this version of himself is safe with Ilya.
“Yes,” Ilya promises. “I’m not going anywhere.”
So Shane presses a kiss into the hollow of Ilya’s throat, and whispers a quiet, trusting, “Goodnight.”
By the time Ilya replies, Shane is already fast asleep.
The next morning when they wake the sun is shining through the windows, casting a honey-gold glow over everything it touches. Dust motes float through the air in a room that is all but static, except for the gentle rise and fall of Ilya’s chest beneath Shane.
They’re still holding hands.
Ilya whispers, “I like you,” in a sleep-soft voice that rolls over Shane like water against the shoreline.
And Shane knows - as surely as he knows his own name - that he won’t ever be able to let this go. He’ll find a way to keep it forever.